Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/31

 and there through the moss and among the big, rough tree-trunks a tiny road winds down through the needle-carpeted sand and leads to a slender long pier, built far out over the shallow reaches of the river to a landing for the river boats. The stream is miles wide in its lower course, but only in its channel is it deep. Shallows stretch far from either bank and fleets of water hyacinths voyaging seaward with the current strand sometimes far from shore. The fifteen-mile trip is thus like one into a sub-tropical wilderness untouched by the chill of approaching winter, little marred by the hand of man. The miracles of gorgeous autumn coloring which we left behind in the Massachusetts woods find no echo here. Now and then a sumac leaf shows dull crimson or the wild grape takes on a somber yellow, yet these tiny dots of color are no more to be noticed in a general survey of the forest than the bright hues of the butterflies that swarm at midday in the bright sun and a temperature of eighty in the shade.

It is a new land, yet it has beauties that are all its own. The full moon was rising over the eastern shore of the river as I climbed its west bank, lighting up the broad central street of the little town with golden radiance. Here for a moment with the soft sand underfoot and the stately live-oaks arching overhead I might have thought my